After months of doubt, football is back
Actual real life college football was played on Saturday. There were six FBS games. Nineteen Power Five teams are scheduled to play their first games this week.
Missouri isn’t yet among that group. The Tigers went through their second scrimmage o fall camp on Saturday morning at Faurot Field. The opener against Alabama is 20 days away with the SEC having made the decision to push back its start date as long as it could to get as much data as possible in relation to COVID-19.
There were days—and weeks or even months if we’re being honest—where it seemed like this day would not arrive. The summer waffled between extremely cautious optimism (aka blind hope) and oppressive pessimism that any games would be played. But in recent weeks, a corner seems to have been turned.
“I feel like we’ve definitely turned the corner,” graduate transfer wide receiver Keke Chism said. “We’re less than three weeks away from kickoff time. Everybody’s trying to shift their focus and get geared up for the first game.”
The depth of despair came the week of August 11th when the Big Ten and the PAC-12 postponed their fall seasons within a day of each other.
“The eye opener for me was when those two conferences, those big Power Five conferences, said they weren’t going to play football,” senior linebacker Jamal Brooks said. “All eyes went to the SEC, the big dogs. I was definitely nervous. Didn’t know what was going to happen.”
"When a couple of conferences folded we were kind of worried about it," head coach Eli Drinkwitz said. "I think Greg Sankey’s done an outstanding job leading and not being worried about whatever was on Twitter. He makes decisions in real time and takes his time and has been that same way the entire time since March. He’s said I’m going to be deliberate in my decision making and give us as much time as we can. Got full trust and confidence in what he’s done compared to some of the other ones.”
Football players have been trained their entire lives to deny any sense of doubt. Every game is winnable, ever opponent has a fatal flaw, every obstacle is just another one to be knocked down. But 2020 is different. Everybody knows it.
“I’m not gonna sit here and make something up and say I never (doubted),” Brooks said. “There were times where it was like, man, I don’t know what’s next. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to play again. Definitely there were times when we didn’t know what was going on. We were just hoping.”
“I wasn’t sure if we were going to play at all this year,” defensive end Chris Turner said. “Especially when they shut down all the Major League teams, all the professional teams. What really kept me hopeful is just controlling what I could control and taking it one day at a time. I couldn’t control today in March.”
For some, they thought they had played their last game of college football.
“Going throughout the whole summer not sure what was going to happen with the whole pandemic, it definitely put it in my mind,” Chism said. “It could be a possibility that we wouldn’t play this year.
“Thankfully everything has been falling into place.”
But now, this may not even be their final year. The NCAA passed a rule in August stating that regardless of how many games played, this year will not count against a player’s eligibility clock. Every player on a roster this season will be eligible to return for the 2021 season. Nobody is ready to talk about that decision quite yet.
“I put some thought on it,” Turner said. “You got to control what you can control today and worry about today. At the end of the season, I’ll make my decision then.”
One impact of that decision will be the use of first-year players. Under normal circumstances, anyone who plays in more than four games burns a year of eligibility. But this year, that rule won’t apply.
“I think with the opt out scenario, everybody’s going to be able to play and be available and there’s no redshirt,” Drinkwitz said. “I think everybody’s got to be ready to play.”
The fallout of that decision will not fully be known for years. But right now, it doesn’t matter. What seemed unlikely, if not impossible, just a month ago, is now reality.
"We’re supposed to have played today, man," Drinkwitz said, saying he felt like he was living in the movie Castaway. "We can’t quite get to that game yet. Every time I think we’re close, the waves throw me back on the beach."
Moments after he said that, it came out that Tennessee, Missouri's second opponent, skipped its scrimmage because 44 players had to be held out of practic. So nobody is relaxing quite yet, but the season--at least a start--now seems imminent.
Right now, there is football. And the congregation said, “AMEN!”
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